On 01 Nov 2011 03:16:45 GMT, John Doe wrote:

I use a voltage regulator. It includes surge suppression and is
almost comparable in price to a good surge suppressor. Unlike an
uninterruptible power supply, there is no battery to mess with.
The regulator protects against momentary voltage sags/overages.
The vast majority of users could get by with that instead of
messing with a UPS. Running my system on a battery is cool, but I
have never been in a situation when it was necessary. But that was
man-made and it didn't destroy anything. Early editions of Windows
trained me well, and blackouts are rare.

How long does the power tend to go out where you are? Here I'm used
to very short outages--blink the lights, reboot the PC type.

$20 for a "Kill A Watt" (or similar) power meter. You will be
surprised at how little power your system actually uses, even at
the wall. Power supply sales appears to be a con game. You can use
the meter to measure other stuff around the house too. Like to see
how much devices use when they are turned off. After that, you
might want to pass it on to somebody else. (That's generic advice,
don't take it personally.)

Pass it on?? I use ours every so often.